Tuesday 5 July

Today was mostly spent travelling to Kuti, which is an animal sanctuary linked to Lilongwe.  Being further out into the bush, the site has more and larger animals, and a wider range of the smaller wildlife.

The journey to Kuti was pretty awful, as we went on the white mini van that is standard transport in Malawi.  I think its a 9 seater (3 in the front, and two rows of 3 in the back), but needless to say it is required to carry far more than 9 people.  Small children, animals, sacks of produce, baskets of chickens and so on don’t count, of course.  Little flaps pull down from sides all over, so that in all we had 18 people (15 adults + 3 small children on knees or in back slings), a basket of chickens, 1 sack of corn, 1 sack of maize,  half a sack of pumpkins, half a sack of textiles (chitenje’s, bed linen etc) and other general paraphernalia. A van will only go once its full, so its possible to sit for hours in the back of a stuffed to bursting van because the drivers still have ‘1 free place’.  And once you have not so much as climbed aboard but have been shoehorned into a tiny seat in the van, and bags of produce loaded, you can’t get out.  You sit and boil while everyone waits patiently, as naturally there is no air conditioning.  I read a newspaper article recently which described the journey for one annoyed passenger who had to wait 9 hours for the van to start the journey!  Travelling by any form of public transport in Africa is pretty uncomfortable.

Once we arrived we were picked up by the reserve’s truck, a 5 seater with an flat bed section behind. Originally we were going to be picked up after the reserve had done it’s shopping, and I could see the vehicle was more than full so that 1 person was already riding outside when we arrived.  Then they announced they had been delayed and were on their way in to the shops!  To my disbelief, we spent 3 hours in the sun parking in one desolate marked place after another picking up bunches of diseased looking bananas and occasional bags of produce from the ‘msungu’ shops.  By the end the van looked as comical as some of the bicycles (photos) carrying impossible loads that wobble around the roads.  It was a huge relief to get to the reserve, find our thatched A frame and lie down for a while.

The cabin has four beds (photos) and a table with 4 chairs.  I am sharing with a lovely girl, Katy, who is from America.  Her father is in the diplomatic community and so is shunted around the world regularly.  Katy soon became fed up with the moves, the loss of friends, the new languages, the new schools, and chose to opt out of this life style many years ago and has been living at a boarding school ever since.  She is visiting her parents for a few weeks, and decided to spend a little time viewing Malawi from a different perspective.  She has been at the reserve for 2 days and seems very happy here.

A car load of guests arrived just before dinner at 1800, and turned out to be a family of 4 with twin girls aged 4 years.  Richard and Helen were from Oxford and were touring Malawi partly because Helen worked in Malawi years ago.  We had a lovely meal and I was delighted to hit bed about 2200 after a little quiet time on the internet.